yeah, I know what you are thinking. 2011? Really? how do you use a machine that old? well, It’s far from a stock Pro 15 (highest specced CPU and display, upgraded RAM, and SSD), and CPU-wise things have not changed that much since then, and as a broke college student with expensive tastes and a proclivity for tinkering, an older MacBook was a good option for me. The biggest areas where I suffer with the older machine are battery life and screen resolution. I do a few things to help mitigate these weaknesses.
Battery Life:
When it comes to battery life, My aging machine will never be as good as the new stuff. It just won’t. To help prolong my time without being tethered to a wall, I do a few things.
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I monitor my GPU status using a little app called gfxCarStatus. This little program sits in my menu bar and tells me if I’m using my integrated graphics or if my discrete GPU is pushing the pixels. The using only the discrete GPU cuts my battery life firmly in half.
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In addition to monitoring GPU status, I also monitor CPU status with Activity Monitor. If things seem out of whack, I can know about it. I do have MenuMeters installed as well, but I like the detailed information Activity Monitor gives me, and MenuMeters gets resource intensive if I ask it to do too much.
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The last thing I do to conserve power is to kill any apps that I’m not using. As obvious as this is, it makes a huge difference in helping me avoid trips to the wall every couple hours.
Screen Resolution
There obviously isn’t much that I can do about the fact that my dinosaur has an extremely low-res screen compared to modern-day MacBooks, but it does help that I have the rare 1680x1050 screen that was an option for these machines. It makes it tolerable to use on a daily basis as long as I don’t go looking at newer machines.
and now, finally for my desktop. Thanks for reading. (exploding chalk wallpapers are awesome. 
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